Comedian Adam Carolla joins Jemele to discuss his new movie "Road Hard" and why he decided to take his comedy career on the road. He also talks about why he left radio and TV to pursue a career in comedy and what it was like growing up in the 80s and early 90s in Los Angeles. He also discusses why he quit his job as a radio host to pursue his dream of becoming an actor and how he went about it. Finally, he talks about what it's like to grow a beard and why it's important to have a beard. And why he thinks the road is getting old for a lot of comedians. This episode was brought to you by Gimlet Media and produced by Vevolution. The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our companies. We do not own any of the rights to any music used in this podcast. All credit given to artists and labels given to us by their respective record labels. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It helps us spread the word to the world about what we're doing. Thank you for listening and supporting this podcast! We appreciate it greatly. -Jon Sorrentino and the support we've gotten from you. Jon Carolla - Jon's new album "The Road Hard" is out now! Jon's music is out on SoundCloud: "Live From the road" is available on Amazon Prime Video. Thanks Jon's Garage Band: "Goodbye Outer Space" by Jon's House of Good Vibes and Good Morning America: "Outer Space" is on Soundcloud: "Coming Soon" and "Good Morning, Good Luck" is Outtro: "The Real Goodbyes" by John's Road Hard "Good Luck" and "Outro Music: "I Don't Know Where I'll See You" by Fucking Goodbye (feat. by Fade & Goodbye" by Scentless, Good Morning, Goodbye, Goodbye, Good Ol' Day, Good Night, Good Life, Good Love & Good Luck, Good Blessings, Goodnight, Good Rodeo "By Mr. "Good Night, Goodbye" by Jeffree Starz & Good Knight by Squeell "Bye, Good Ollie & Good Love, Goodbye?
00:00:33.000I started to realize, after I had my twins, that what I did was radio, podcasting, but I felt like it was all just floating up into the ether, you know?
00:00:46.000And I thought, I want some sort of permanent record, like some sort of legacy.
00:00:51.000You know, books, movies, the stuff that gets passed around.
00:00:55.000You know, what I'm saying is, over Christmas time, me and my eight-year-old twins, we watch planes, trains, and automobiles and love the shit out of it.
00:01:06.000And that movie's like 30 years old now.
00:03:00.000It's almost like, yeah, you get like a seed is growing, it starts poking out through the dirt, and you're like, all right, we got to do something here.
00:04:23.000No, those deals, you know, those deals, I mean...
00:04:29.000As soon as Roseanne and Seinfeld and Tim Allen and Ray Romano had success doing sitcoms, Hollywood was like, who's the next Ray Romano going to be?
00:04:43.000And so they started bringing guys in and throwing tons of cash at them just to spitball ideas and just whatever.
00:04:50.000And so the guys immediately got off the road because they're like, screw that, I'm moving to Hollywood.
00:05:47.000And then you start feeling sort of bad for him, even though you shouldn't, because Roofer...
00:05:54.000Cop, fireman, all real jobs versus going to hilarities and getting paid for, you know, standing up on stage and holding a beer in your hand.
00:06:03.000But you're feeling bad for this guy because you know he doesn't really want to go there.
00:11:23.000What I would do is, you know, I'd walk through Kirkland, Washington, and I'd see, oh, they have little flags that they use that go in a little receptacle, and when you cross the street, even at a signal in a crosswalk, you hold the little flag up.
00:11:38.000And then you go set it back down in the receptacle on the other side of the street.
00:12:52.000After what started happening is then, you know, next week in Phoenix, I'd go, you guys got a nice town, but let me tell you about Kirkland, Washington.
00:13:00.000They got flags to cross, you know, and then I could do the same 10 minutes again.
00:13:05.000And that's how the act was built during the course of the experience on the road.
00:13:13.000There's a lot of guys who wind up doing that that are sitcom actors that wound up Doing stand-up after they became a sitcom actor, like Screech from Saved by the Bells, particularly famous for it.
00:14:30.000And I also think the guy went up missing.
00:14:33.000Recently and maybe dead went out in like the wilderness and like killed himself Someone's gonna have to do some skippy research I think you might be confusing skippy with the guy who killed the the development deal that we were talking about earlier Chicken, do you know that story?
00:14:49.000No, you don't know what killed the development deal.
00:14:51.000No there Montreal especially the Montreal Comedy Festival was this big event Where all the industry would go there, and it was really kind of an excuse to go drink.
00:15:25.000Like, you know those people that you talk to and they're just kind of, they're kind of like metal filings getting pulled towards the magnet.
00:15:32.000They don't necessarily have their own compass.
00:15:34.000They don't necessarily have their own opinion on things that they formulated.
00:15:57.000This was like every comic, I mean every comic, was like, what the fuck?
00:16:02.000Like, you'll get comics that'll defend the most undefendable, you know, you mean there's a lot of comics that, you know, love all sorts of weird marginal acts, but this guy was off the charts.
00:16:44.000Well, you know, I was saying the other day, you know, I think second only to cops in suicide, comedians might be number two in the suicide department.
00:24:26.000Easily the most popular part of his act, so then he kind of morphed into being him, and then everywhere he goes would dress like the Dice Man.
00:24:37.000Larry the Cable Guy was a stand-up that wasn't getting any traction, just became this guy on the radio in Tampa or something.
00:24:45.000The next thing you know, the club would rather book Larry the Cable Guy than Dan Whitney.
00:24:50.000Than Dan Whitney, so they go with Larry the Cable Guy.
00:24:53.000I started off doing Mr. Burcham, the shop teacher, out here, and at a certain point, when it came time to take over on Loveline, K-Rock, the mother station, was like, we'd like you to host Loveline as Mr. Burcham.
00:26:02.000He hated all his kids, and he would...
00:26:07.000Every Monday, he would call into Kevin and Bean because he got into another accident in the garage, you know, with the bandsaw or something, and he wasn't going to be making it in.
00:26:17.000So you'd say, well, why is this guy calling Kevin and Bean to tell him he's not coming in to teach his shop class that day?
00:26:28.000And what I'd figured out is that all of his kids...
00:26:34.000Who attended his class because it was junior high.
00:29:06.000I just said, look, this is not going to work big picture.
00:29:11.000Like, I could do one episode this way, but you don't want Mr. Bertram two hours a night every night.
00:29:18.000Plus, we were just starting syndication, so we're only in one city that kind of knew Mr. Bertram, and then the rest of the cities didn't know Mr. Bertram, so it wouldn't have made sense.
00:29:31.000You would have to start from scratch again.
00:29:39.000But yeah, that's how it all got started.
00:29:42.000When you started your podcast, I did it way, way back in the day, back when you were still sitting on that couch and you had the clip-on microphones.
00:30:32.000Yeah, I... God, I remember a million years ago when I was doing Bill Simmons' podcast from his garage.
00:30:40.000He was set up but like only set up with one microphone or that's all they could do so I had to call into the show but I was there So I literally got his phone, like his home phone, and dialed in and then stood out in the driveway,
00:30:59.000you know, so he didn't hear me in the room.
00:33:28.000My god explain what the lawsuit was about because if people want to pull their fucking hair out in traffic This is so it's so crazy that someone could actually pull you into court for this Well not only pull you into court but pull you into their court in You know Eastern,
00:34:40.000And they're not there to upset their own apple cart, you know what I mean?
00:34:44.000Like, in terms of reform and rules and righting a wrong and all that kind of stuff, how much you want to piss off the guy you're going to the country club with?
00:34:54.000You'll see him at the country club on Saturday.
00:35:14.000It's like saying, you know, the guy's walking through the park with the stick and the nail in the end of it, picking up garbage, picking up trash.
00:35:59.000Well, not only that, if you're a person who's getting divorced, understand this.
00:36:03.000If you're gonna go through mediation or whatever, even if you get along well with your ex-wife and you guys are both like, look, we love each other, but this is not working out.
00:36:34.000He lost his fucking championship belt to a girl that he used to have naked hugs with, you know?
00:36:39.000They used to get together and they used to touch each other and make each other feel good, so the judge decided, well, you know what, you need to give up that belt that you got punched in the head for, to this woman that used to touch you.
00:36:50.000I would have gone like Jake LaMotta before he went to the pawn shop.
00:36:54.000I would have just picked out everything out of that belt.
00:36:56.000Just handed her a fanny pack with a shiny thing on the front of it.
00:37:00.000Strapped that fucking thing to a tree and shot holes in it until it was worthless.
00:38:03.000He says this and he says that, but what about 10 years from now?
00:38:07.000He could agree to do this, but if he just agrees to it and you guys just have a handshake, he'd pull the plug the next day on child support, blah, blah, blah, alimony, blah, blah, blah.
00:39:09.000And she shot him when he was sleeping.
00:39:12.000But when he was talking about it, I was the one who was trying to tell him to get divorced a long time ago.
00:39:19.000Like, he had gone through these breakups where he'd moved out and then moved back in and, you know, they'd fight like cats and dogs and like, fuck this, I'm done.
00:40:04.000But the word from people that have taken it is that if you take Zoloft and you mix it with some other chemicals, you can just lose your fucking marbles.
00:41:25.000The podcast community, especially with guys like Joe, got together and we stood up to these guys because they know how much litigation costs.
00:41:35.000The problem with the country we're living in is everybody has this thing where they go...
00:41:41.000I've had people who bought a house for me 10 years ago and are like, hey man, there's a crack in the foundation and we need 25 grand.
00:41:53.000And you're like, no, what are you talking about?
00:41:56.000And then at some point, some lawyer is going to say to you, It's a lot cheaper just to give them, you know, probably give them down to $17,500.
00:44:11.000What they found was, you know, and I've had this happen, but it's like, you know, it's this weird thing where it's like, hey man, what's with all the shit talking?
00:44:21.000And it's like, hey man, what's with all the suing?
00:44:24.000Like they were upset at you because you were talking shit while you- Have a little decorum.
00:44:28.000That's hilarious while we're trying to steal money from you.
00:44:48.000To this day, I couldn't really explain it other than to say, if you made a playlist, somehow they had some sort of proprietary technology of a list or playlist.
00:45:43.000I mean, but it is the kind of thing where it's like, yeah, yeah, there's a side where, okay, you're getting out there, you're talking about it, and all that, and that's fine.
00:45:52.000But it's just this sort of thing where, as an atheist, with X amount of hours on the planet...
00:46:01.000Reading emails from lawyers from Eastern Texas, it's just not on my, you know, getting phone calls, you know, I'm shooting a show for Spike and the phone's ringing, it's an update out of Texas, you know, it's like, I'm trying to do this other thing.
00:46:16.000Did you have to physically go and sit in court in Texas?
00:47:43.0001952. The average business that was semi-successful, or the average person that was semi-successful, how often do they get sued...
00:47:56.000Versus 2015. I don't think there's such a thing as being successful in business or as a personality and not having people coming after you.
00:48:09.000Now, I don't think you know how many...
00:48:12.000I'm sure Kanye West has 13 lawsuits going simultaneously along with Chris Brown and whoever else.
00:48:53.000Ex-fighters, most of them fighters that weren't that successful, like weren't like championship caliber or, you know, got to a point in their career where they realized, you know, hey, I'm not really ever going to get rich off of this and then started suing and became a part of this,
00:49:16.000You see, it's all trickled down in this sense.
00:49:24.000I've always said there was a time in this country when if you saw a guy driving a brand new Cadillac and, you know, the father and son were walking down the street and here comes Mr. Johnson and his big black Cadillac going up to the top of the hill, there was a time when the father would look at the son and say,
00:49:43.000you study hard, you work hard, you get it done, and one day you can have big shiny Cadillac and live up at the top of the hill.
00:49:53.000Now, smash cut to 2015, the son's looking at the dad going, what the fuck does he have that Cadillac, and we're driving a Isuzu Trooper.
00:50:05.000Let's go throw a rock at that guy's Cadillac, or let's go see what we can get from Mr. Johnson.
00:50:10.000See, there's a mentality of, you and I have the mentality of, and it's what this country was basically settled on, which is, go get some for yourself.
00:50:20.000We have a larger and larger group looking around going, wait a minute, what are they doing, and how can I get some of what they got?
00:50:29.000You know, this whole country is, but it's a whole mentality.
00:50:35.000I mean, it's trickling down from the government.
00:53:45.000What the people would say, who we vehemently disagree with, is that guy on the construction site can't Get to the next level and can't get off that construction site because his dad carried drywall and he's poor.
00:54:02.000And he's a product of the system and he's a product of the education around him and he's a product of that environment.
00:54:53.000But they're playing chess and they're not thinking ahead, they're not focusing, they're not concentrating.
00:54:57.000They might be distracted while they're playing that chess.
00:55:00.000Life, when it comes to capitalism, when it comes to, I mean, forget capitalism, when it comes to trying to, let's use that phrase, get ahead.
00:55:10.000And what you decide to do, whether you decide to build houses, or you decide to make paintings, or you decide to fix cars, whatever the fuck you decide to do, you're essentially playing a game.
00:55:21.000The game is, I will try to get really good at this, and hopefully I'll get some money along the way.
00:55:26.000And if you do not play the game, and you decide, I'm just going to stick to this whole digging thing, and, uh, why don't I have a Cadillac?
00:55:33.000I'm not, I'm fucking digging this thing, I'm, I'm working all day!
00:56:18.000Yeah, we just had a different kind of fun.
00:56:20.000Well, you didn't have children back then, too.
00:56:21.000No, our kind of fun was get in the back of a F-150 pickup, and we're going to Baja, and we're going to buy some roadside fireworks and shoot them off out the back of the pickup truck and camp on the beach and surf naked and start a bonfire and drink some mezcal tequila.
00:56:56.000But that doesn't mean that you can't...
00:56:59.000Get freedom from money that relieves pressure.
00:57:02.000And that's where people are mistaken, this idea that it's one or the other, that it's either or.
00:57:06.000Either you are enjoying your life as a poor person, you're happy and wonderful and loving, or you're a wealthy miser who fucking hates his life and lives in depression and drinks himself to death.
01:00:22.000And then how's the government going to figure that out?
01:00:24.000And yeah, you can make the school system as even as you can, and you can make the law as even as you can, but the chick who's 6'1", who looks like Heidi Klum, still going to have a quite advantage over Alex Borstein.
01:01:18.000Because she doesn't look like Uma Thurman, she went to work hard developing a bunch of other skills other than looking good on a Saturday night, and now makes a nice living.
01:02:28.000Well, don't you think that's going to happen anyway?
01:02:30.000I'm a hundred percent convinced that we're going to be able to manipulate people's bodies to the point where within a hundred years, we're going to be able to create, you know, whatever you want.
01:02:37.000You could look like the thing from Fantastic Four.
01:02:40.000You know, they're going to be able to do things to your body.
01:02:43.000People are already doing weird body modifications, you know, putting like bolts in their heads and cutting the tips of their fucking noses off and weird shit just to look weird and interesting, tattooing their face up.
01:04:40.000At a certain point, I remember well, it was like 1985, I was picking up garbage on a construction site, In Granada Hills, and a helicopter landed, and Donald Trump got out.
01:05:53.000Man, they didn't like you talking shit about their corporation, their entity, their LLC. Imagine if you got some actual physical dudes, you could put their faces up on your website.
01:06:09.000You know, as soon as everybody, not just me, but the community sort of band together, I was like...
01:06:19.000As soon as they wanted me to stop, I realized it was sort of like punching a guy in the stomach and watching him wince, you know, like when you're sparring and go, oh, okay, I get it.
01:08:10.000Whenever you find, like, especially male or female, but you start talking to that successful celebrity dude, and you start talking to him about his sister...
01:08:31.000Find out about the time that they sucked you into this business deal, never gave your money back, and by the way, are pissed at you.
01:08:39.000Find about that time when your sister needed to borrow a little whatever, or you paid for a kid's private school for like three years, and then when you finally said, I can't pay for it anymore, she called you an asshole and stormed out of the room.
01:08:53.000Just in general, see how those relationships are going.
01:08:58.000I have a great relationship with my sister.
01:09:38.000Well, what I'm saying is, the successful one...
01:09:44.000Ask the successful one how good the relationship is with the brother that's not successful and see if it's not based on a lot of shit that the brother was asking from them from the point when they see the guy's name on the collar ID that they don't even want to pick up anymore.
01:10:02.000Because they know it's just going to be him asking for something.
01:10:05.000That's the weird, uncomfortable thing about certain friendships when people want to drag you into business deals.
01:10:10.000But I just don't do any of that anymore.
01:10:44.000At least when you give a bum five bucks, he goes, God bless you.
01:10:47.000Well, people feel like they're just one deal away.
01:10:51.000There's a friend that I have that I talk to every now and then, and I call him up, and I talked to him recently, and I called him up, and I was like, what's up, man?
01:11:00.000And I wanted it to be, hey, everything's good, you know, blah, blah, blah, just doing this and doing that, and But immediately it was a fucking sales pitch for some new business that he wants to start.
01:11:10.000And if I get involved, we're gonna make this amount of money and it can't go wrong because it's this and that.
01:11:14.000And I mean, this guy is just ear beating the fuck out of me for like five minutes on the phone.
01:11:18.000I go, dude, dude, dude, I'm not getting involved in anything.
01:11:21.000Well, you don't even have to get involved.
01:14:45.000If you have a house and you're renting it out and some guy moves in and just decides to stop paying his rent, It's good luck getting the money from him.
01:14:55.000Good luck getting him out of your house.
01:15:53.000The more conflict they can somehow or another write down in books, the more they can make it easier to sort of manipulate clauses and sue people for things like a serialized podcast on the internet.
01:16:08.000Well, not only that, but all the stuff...
01:16:19.000Every new car you buy has a bunch of warning stickers that are hot glued to the sun visor, a bunch of buzzers and backup things, and a bunch of...
01:16:38.000To the average flight is added to the ticket for just all the shit, all the insurance that the airline has to cover or that the car manufacturer has to cover or all the shit that's going to get people sued.
01:16:52.000Think about just how much cheaper everything would be if everyone wasn't completely lawyered up and completely...
01:17:02.000And think about all the stupid conversations and all the paperwork and how we've completely lost our humanity.
01:17:11.000You know, the warehouse that I do my podcast from, when I bought that warehouse, there was a guy in it and he sold flooring.
01:17:20.000And I bought it, but he had like nine, ten months left on his lease.
01:17:26.000And I said to him, like, if you just bought a new warehouse and you're thinking, hey, I'd like to move, turns out my friends moved all their shit in, but I'd like to move some of my shit in or make a studio or something like that.
01:17:38.000But a guy had a lease for like nine months.
01:17:48.000And I said, well, as soon as you can find that place, tell me, because I'm anxious to get in here with my boys and get going and start building this place out.
01:17:59.000And about three months later, he's like, I found another place.
01:18:03.000And I said, fine, consider yourself out of your lease and have fun.
01:19:10.000What legally could have happened is I could have been many of the douchebags I've dealt with.
01:19:17.000And I could have taken over the warehouse and then went and sent this guy a letter and said, hey man, you still have five months left on your lease and it's $3,300 or whatever.
01:19:46.000Just give him the 10. It's going to be a lot cheaper than paying me and going to court.
01:19:49.000But what about, okay, to play devil's advocate or the argument against it, what about things like, you know the situation, I believe it was Chevrolet, had...
01:19:59.000Some ignition issues that they knew about, where cars were cutting out, and it caused a bunch of deaths.
01:20:05.000And a lot of people were aware of this issue, but they knew that a recall would be incredibly expensive, and they dragged their heels, and they didn't do anything about it for a long time, and now it's just a fucking complete disaster, and they're getting sued like crazy.
01:20:55.000Ford Pinto, I had two of my best friends died about three miles from here in a Pinto station wagon that was in an accident and burst into flames.
01:22:22.000And I agree with you that there's definitely the mentality of going after successful people.
01:22:31.000But obviously there's some successful people that are cunts and there's some successful people that have gotten there by ripping people off or by using slave labor in third world countries and charging them pennies on the dollar.
01:22:43.000Things that could have been done in America with a reasonable wage.
01:22:48.000And it's for people that are listening to this, that are trying to form their own identity and carve their own path, the key is to not concentrate on other people and go, why them?
01:22:59.000The key is to look at your own self and go, what do I want to do and how do I get there?
01:23:04.000Right, because you could be Heidi Klum or Donald Trump, or you could be Robert and Lenny, who never saw their 19th birthday.
01:23:14.000I'm guessing you're somewhere in between.
01:23:17.000So, if you're somewhere in between, you just joined a huge pool called America, and it's time to get to work.